Twitch Backup Supreme readme.txt

Introduction:

I've created this backup script because there has been an iconoclasm of internet content and culture. In 2020 the RIAA issued DMCA complaints to Amazon for Twitch streamers who had listened to RIAA music. Amazon is legally required to act, and they punished Twitch streamers big and small with temporary or permanent bans. This has led to a mass-deletion of historic Twitch content forever, as other streamers destroy their past to protect their future. Uncountable hours of clips and stream replays from years of work have been deleted without being backed up. I hope that with this tool, anyone can preserve their favorite internet culture for future generations. 

RIAA has also issued a DMCA takedown for the app that downloads Twitch videos, youtube-dl. As if anyone is stealing music by downloading old videos and streams to watch. Face palm. Anyway, you will need to find youtube-dl yourself.

For this script, each Twitch user that you want to backup has its own folder tree with duplicate scripts and a duplicate youtube-dl app. This makes everything super portable and customizable and less fuckupable. You can break whatever you want for one backup script and the other backups will still work.

I've tried to create a pretty filename format. It's date-first so the files are sortable by the most important attribute in the event that the filesystem dates are lost. Next is the number of views so you can visually see how important the video was to people. Next is the stream or clip title. Clips have the username of the person who made the clip. And finally, the unique Twitch ID number, just in case there happened to be an otherwise duplicate file name. 


Instructions:

Step 1) Make a new copy of the Username folder. Keep the original folder untouched so you can make new copies of it in the future for new usernames that you want to backup. You should have the Backup.bat files next to the youtube-dl.exe.

Step 2) Rename the new copy of the Username folder to equal the Twitch username that you want to backup. So, instead of "Username - Copy", you rename that folder to "Ninja", or MyFavoriteStreamerName.

Step 3) Run one or all of the .bat files. The youtube-dl app will download everything it can, which may not be everything available. There seems to be a limit of 1000 clips.


Conclusion:

Hopefully someone else can get around the 1000 clip limit with more clever programming. 1000 clips are just a fraction of what most streams have, but it's better than nothing. That's around 20GB downloaded. A VOD archive could amount to terabytes. 

Cool feature: youtube-dl is aware of duplicates, so you can run it now and then run it later to pick up new content, or cancel part-way through and resume later.

Future plan: Twitch video in 2020 is h264 format. If you transcode the video to h265 (slowly) or AV1 (really slowly), then the file size will be cut in half.

The Great Sphinx of Egypt had a nose, and people were streaming on Twitch before 2020. Say "NO" to iconoclasm by preserving today's internet culture for future generations!